Context / Plug: I'm a founder of a Meetup competitor / successor called lu.ma
I think Meetup got in a hard position because they didn't have very many paid events and their communities tended to churn off of Meetup. It's hard to make money as a community organizing tool so they tried a bunch of different ways of making money, including charging guests + showing irrelevant ads which both don't work.
Also, Meetup was in a very weird spot before the pandemic. They were bought by WeWork and then sold off in the WeWork crunch. I doubt any of the original team is still there.
Anyway, lu.ma is free to use for free events so if there's anything I can reach out with, feel free to ping me at [email protected]
Hi! I'm a founder of lu.ma which a lot of Meetup hosts have migrated to in the past year. We're kind of a mix between Meetup + Eventbrite. You can see some tech events we've featured here — lu.ma/explore
I'd love to see if I can help you get your community up and running again. Feel free to reach out - [email protected]
In terms of funding / sponsorships, I think it's certainly harder than the market a few years ago since there is just less free money for tech / startups, but we've seen a lot of new tech communities thrive. Also, a lot of people are willing to pay to attend events!
We do have many events happening in Seattle tho so we should add discovery there in the next couple months .